THE HALF TIME SHUFFLE

In this lesson we will look at the famous Half
Time Shuffle. To begin with let's look at what Half Time even means.
If it was a regular shuffle, the snare backbeat would be coming in
on beats 2 and 4. When you make it half time, the snare back beat
comes in half as often (once only), and it comes in half way through
the bar (beat 3). This is where the name comes from.

There
are many different ways we can play the Half Time Shuffle, let's
have a look at the most basic beat first. This is the beat we are
trying to play..

Let's look at the RH part first. You want the
hihat to really convey the time feel all on its own. To do this, you
need to accentuate the downbeat by playing the shoulder of the stick
on the edge of the hihats, this will produce a solid, thick sound.
Then the 3rd triplet of each beat should be played with the tip of
the stick on the top of the hihats (you will need to raise your
wrist slightly for this).

Start out practicing this motion
very slowly, and make deliberate movements with the wrist in order
to get the 2 different sounds. As you speed up the pattern you will
need to condense this motion into a smaller movement pattern (the
wrist on its own is not fast enough, and employ the Push-Pull
Technique. With the accents in place, the RH hihat part should look
like this..

From here start adding in really simply rhythms
with the bass and snare drum, start by playing beat 1 on the bass
drum. Once you can do that, add beat 3 on the snare drum. Together
you have your basic beat, which looks like this..

From here you can add in other quarter notes on
the bass drum..

And eventually you will want to start adding in
3rd triplets (which will sound like swung 16th notes) on the bass
drum as well. Here is a 2 bar phrase..

The next thing to do is add the middle triplet
as a ghost note on the snare. Make sure you are dropping the stick
from 2cm above the skin, no higher. The patterns will now sound
quite busy, especially at speed, so its very important that you
remember the following:

1) A large dynamic contrast between
the ghost notes and accents on snare drum2) Make sure every note
is perfectly even, do not speed up or slow down. Pick a tempo where
you can play everything evenly.3) Make sure there are no splits
or flams in the groove, between multiple voices on the kit. This
really kills the goove. Everything must land exactly in the correct
spot, in time with the other voices.The basic groove, would now
look like this..

You can see how busy the pattern is even at its
most basic level. All the notes in brackets are ghost notes.
Remember - SOFT, SOFT, SOFT! The groove will sound monotonous and
dense if the soft notes become even a fraction too loud. It's a
deceptively hard groove to play for that reason alone.